I'm moving.

Literally, like right now. I'm moving right now. I'm mid-packing, mid-cleaning, mid-nervous breakdowning, mid-sneezing, mid-organizing, mid-annoyance. In less than 24 hours, my stress will be completely gone and I'll be drinking a beer with BFF & Co., celebrating the one birthday that is louder (and longer) than mine. I'm holding on to that with all of my might. That shit is my reward.

I was making excellent progress. I've been doing shit non-stop since 7:30 this morning (with one small fifteen minute pizza break), not to mention the solid six hours we put in yesterday. We have lime green duct tape. We have boxes labeled in expletives and exhaustion. We have dust everywhere.

I was making excellent progress. I ran across a big folder full of cards that I had kept because a) I'm a fucking pack rat, and b) I'm a fucking pack rat. No more pack ratty-ness!! I only began going through them in order to make sure I had no loose cash in any of them. Naturally.

I started tearing up when I found a card from my father from my birthday a few years ago. It was a very simplistic card but for some reason, it hit me then, and it hit me now. Keep.

I threw away a bunch of other cards until I ran across a card from my late grandmother, the light of my life, my hero. As I studied her handwriting, remembering her smile, the tears started to come again. Keep.

I found a bunch of mix tapes I made in high school to people who once upon a time were very important to me. Blurred vision encouraged by melancholy memories. Keep.

I ran across a small card that I didn't recognize. The handwriting inside was familiar. The lines were not straight and the penmanship suffered, but the card came back to me immediately. "You are the best thing that's ever happened to me," it read. A goodbye, good luck, Jesus fucking Christ I don't want you to go card. As I read, the tears became unstoppable. I cried into the dusty silence and texted the BFF, reminding her that I fucking fiercely love her. Keep.

Thirty minutes later, I was still crying. I couldn't stop. I haven't had a really hard cry in a long time, and it was apparently due. Stress from moving, stress from work, stress from money, stress from family, stress from boys, stress from impending separation anxiety, stress stress stress, cry cry cry.

I'm growing up all of a sudden. I am a 24 year old independent woman with a bus pass and a bicycle and a job and bills and a desktop computer and a checklist and furniture that belongs to me. I am very different than I was when I was 22 and moved into this breathtakingly beautiful apartment with the oversized lavender Adirondack chair and the vine-covered walls and the picture-perfect deck and the yellow kitchen and the tiger wood shelving units and the long long long hallway and that lake... that lake.

Throw shit away, start new. Throw shit away, start new. Throw shit away. Start new.

Throw shit away.

Start new.